Wednesday 13 May 2015

MAGIX VIDEO X7 PRO REVIEW FOLLOW UP SYNAPSE CIRCUIT

Video X7 mixing audio mixing desk with mastering and the 5.1 surround sound.
Yes, for surround sound you will need surround sound speakers.
SYNAPSE CIRCUIT
MAGIX VIDEO X7 PRO
REVIEW FOLLOW-UP
£349

Goodhour, Synapse Circuit Readers! It is a blessing to see you as always! On a beautiful day such as this is I appreciate life all the more! I hope that the Sun is shining on you too!

I am so glad that you enjoyed the Magix Video X7 Pro review! Here’s a follow-up!

#MAGIX #VideoX7Pro #VideoEditing


SYSTEM: PC? MAC?
Many people ask me, “What would you recommend for a video editing system: PC or MAC?” Or they tell me outright, “You ought to be using a MAC...” “You just need a decent PC...” Let me address these issues...

I personally will always recommend going PC! Why? The simple fact is that for what you’d pay for a top notch MAC Pro you’d get almost twice as much value in a PC! As always it’s a question of buying the best you can afford, the fastest and most powerful CPU, the fastest and the most RAM you can fit on a motherboard, the fastest and largest hard drives and so on!

MAC’s are good and the Final Cut video editing program is very good – from what little experience I had with it! However, I remain PC because there are a handful of computer software houses such as Magix that are coming up with great titles and Video X7 Pro is one of them! The PC has these great cost effective software that makes having one (a PC) a no brainer. The bigger the better!


THE INDUSTRY STANDARD
If you went and / or are still attending media studies you will no doubt come to understand what are the “industry standard” software. Usually Adobe holds most of the industry standard software in the media business, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and, of course, Premiere! I have observed that the “industry standard” software happens to be priced out of reach of the average person. A lot of people in the industry, as it were, that are starting out tend to use pirated software. It has been said that pirate software is quietly encouraged by the likes of Adobe in the hope that once you’ve made it to the big time you’ll want to own your own copy! So, I have been told by a super-secretive hacker / programmer... Anyhoo, it is down to Magix and a handful of software houses that have made it possible for creative people to explore their creativity with cost effective software. I’ve been using Magix software for years and people cannot tell the difference – the resulting medium could have been produced with software costing two to three times as much. The resulting medium, professional looking videos in this instance, is what is most important. Magix is one of the software houses that caused Adobe to release consumer oriented software cut from their main titles suffixed with “elements” i.e. Premiere Elements.

Yes, although Video X7 Pro is a little more expensive than its prosumer Movie Edit Pro (Standard & Premium) it is still cost effective and it does do what you expect it to do which is to produce professional video with audio to match.

If you want to own your own software and you wish to produce professional videos then Magix Video X7 Pro is certainly one way to go! I think it is the only way to go as an alternative to Adobe Premiere!
CONVERT
No! I am not trying to convert you! But you should give Video X7 Pro a try!

Video can still be an intensive resource hungry medium to manipulate on a PC – especially when using camcorders that output to AVCHD video format! I found that even my PC struggled with the AVCHD video format and it has a i7 2.8GHz CPU and 8GB RAM!!!

The MP4 format is more malleable and this format is synonymous with smartphones, digital cameras and cost effective camcorders. MP4 isn’t a strain on a system similar to my own. When faced with resource intensive formats such as AVCHD the best thing to do is convert it from within Video X7 to MP4 or use Sorenson Squeeze to convert video files very, very quickly!

THE 10 MINUTE TEST
Ideally software should be easy to use without consulting a manual or YouTube tutorial. Video X7 Pro has to be one of the most straightforward programs I have used. The interface speaks to me and is very intuitive. There again, I have used other Magix software such as Music Maker... And come to think of it that was very straightforward to use too!

Whenever I review software I try to produce something within 10 minutes. This idea was inspired by these industry tradeshow competitions whereby you had a 10 minute time limit to produce something outstanding in Photoshop, for example. What I have done is to take it a step further and produce something from software that has never been used before. OK, I have used earlier versions of Video X and Movie Edit Pro but Video X7 gained an interface overhaul to be fair! I have version X2!

The resulting video took less than 10 minutes to put together (it probably shows) but the idea was to knock something watchable out at breakneck speed which was a little difficult as I didn’t convert the AVCHD video files to MP4! The resulting video took under 10 minutes to put together, I used a bit of noise filtering on the interviews – not too much as to make the sound come across as unnatural – and I mastered the whole audio using the Mastering Suite. It took around 20 minutes to export to the MP4 format and it took around 97 minutes to upload it to YouTube (I went to bed and left it running).

Don’t Stop The Carnival


I shot some footage of the carnival a couple of years ago for a documentary that never materialized (hee hee) and I thought that I’d have a laugh by producing a little something to show for the effort I made! I reckon if I spent a couple of days on it I’d have a fairly interesting documentary on the (in)famous Notting Hill Carnival!

Get your copy of Magix Video X7 Pro today!

The Synapse Circuit Video X7 Pro Review

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